"Debunking The Top Seven Lies About Gaza And October 7th"
Mehdi Hasan’s Zeteo reveals seven lies of Israel about Gaza. The revelation was made on the new video series on Zeteo named ‘Debunked’. The segmented started with “the top seven lies about Gaza”. Taking to his social media platform, Hasan wrote, “we must call out those dangerous lies even if others in our media won’t”. He said his new video series is devoted to “debunking the top seven lies about Gaza & October 7th”.
According to Hasan, the first lie is that Hamas broke the already existing ceasefire on October 7th, as said by Israel. He said though Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former US Secretary of the State, Hillary Clinton keeps saying about the breach of the existing ceasefire by Hamas, “it’s completely false”.
Debunking the Israeli claim, He cited news articles from AP news agency on “Israeli airstrikes in Gaza for 3rd day in a row as West Bank violence intensifies”. The article was published two weeks before the October 7th attack, said Hasan. Another news article said Gaza Strip protesters received bullet wounds to ankles. Another article read, “even before Hamas’ attack on October 7, Israeli forces had already killed 234 Palestinians in the West Bank this year (2023), while settlers were responsible for nine more killings”. Hasan mocked that even if there was a ceasefire before the October 7th attack, “nobody told Israeli military” about it.
Another lie shown was the priority given to freeing the hostages. Quoting US President Joe Biden’s statement that read, “there’s no higher priority”. Meanwhile, Israel’s finance minister Bezalel Smotrich last month said, bringing home hostages “is not the top priority…Hamas must be destroyed”.
Mehdi Hasan said, “wittingly or unwittingly, Israeli military has killed more Israeli hostages than its soldiers have rescued”. He cited the report of an Israeli journalist’s tweet which shared an Israeli website. The website said, 10 Israeli hostages were killed by Israeli air strikes in Gaza. It said the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) had intel on some of the hostages were residing in buildings that were targeted by them. According to Hasan, IDF “killed their own citizens and then lied and said they died in Hamas captivity”.
The third lies was the most celebrated lie about Hamas attack on October 7th – the 40 beheaded babies. Hasan called it the “most emotive and most offensive lie of this entire conflict”. It was earlier proven that no babies were found beheaded. Israeli media Haaretz also reported that they were lies. Though, one baby was killed on October 7th attack, as said by Israeli security agency. Hasan called the story of 40 beheaded babies as a “cynical, reckless and repulsive lie” that was used to justify the killing of hundreds of Palestinian babies.
Another lie, that was added in the list of debunk was the IDF claim of Hamas headquarters under the Al Shifa hospital. IDF could not provide no hard proof of Hamas using the hospital as the headquarters, except “a pair of cots in a room fashioned from a white tile”, which appeared to be out of use. Washington Post also reported about IDF failing to produce immediate evidence of Hamas using the hospital for military use and as a “command and control centre”.
Recalling what Israeli spokesperson Mark Regev to me on his show Peacock, back in November when he was working in MSNBEC, Hasan highlighted Israeli government’s reluctance in trusting the numbers provided by Gaza Health Ministry. However, the Israeli itself use the Health Ministry’s casualty figure reliable.
He also said that the world’s most famous medical journal, The Lancet also proved that there were no inflated mortality reporting from Gaza.
The sixth lie, put forth by Hasan was the “there is no hunger in Gaza” claim by Israeli defence official, while Gazans, including babies die out of starvation. He cited World Food Programme, which said four out of the five of world’s most hungriest people in the world right now are in Gaza.
The seventh lie was the claim that the Gazans who are getting killed today chose Hamas. They elected Hamas as their political power, which according to Hasan is a “Bin Laden -ist logic” which says “if you vote a way I don’t like, I get to kill you”. Hasan said the claim of Gazans elected Hamas is “just a lie”. To prove his point, he pointed out that half of the Gaza’s population are under 18, and most of them weren’t even born during the time when the last election in Gaza took place, which is nearly two decades ago. He also pointed that in the 2006 legislative election, Hamas did not win the majority of the vote cast.
